Retire the Green Weenie

It’s time to retire the Green Weenie.  I’m not talking about the New York mayoral campaign, but about the use of old and dangerous church vans and buses.

I was in the balcony yesterday when the minister reminded the congregation to pray for the associate pastor for youth and the senior class youth who were on a trip. 

This morning I heard of a Church van accident in Indiana which claimed the lives of several people.  Such news seems to happen more frequently these days, or perhaps my years in church work have taught me to be more attentive when such accidents occur.

As a youth minister decades ago, I drove a church bus called the Green Weenie.   It was old, badly maintained, yet we would pack on thirty teens for a trip of two hundred miles to the youth camp at the beach.  Traffic was not as bad then, still the old bus did not need lots of traffic or speed to pose a danger.  With a youth minister (me) who had hurriedly studied for a chauffeur’s license, we would take off with a prayer and few worries about the dangers involved in driving a bus badly maintained and with an inexperienced driver.

As pastor over many years since driving the Green Weenie, I have encouraged churches to get rid of old vans and buses, even new ones, which usually sit in a church parking lot for months at a time.  Some are used for local trips, but the long trips on interstate highways once or twice a year test the limits of a church committee’s ability to adequately maintain a safe vehicle.

Many churches think it is a bargain when Aunt Lucille gives the Church money designated for a van, or when another Church hands over their Green Weenie to a smaller church.   Fact is, these are not bargains.   A reliable rental agency can provide the buses or vans with insurance and safety features which could save lives. In most cases rentals save money in the long run.

Yes, I’ll pray for the church youth who go on trips on the church vans emblazoned with the name of the Church and often with a message like “Go with God.” Too often, that’s exactly what can happen.  Just like our bodies that we can tattoo with “Jesus loves me,” we must realize we are not immune to illness or accidents because of our faith.  What we can do is sell the Green Weenie and be responsible in how we send our kids to summer camps and retreats.  It’s just the right thing to do.

 

Remember But Move On

My  brother is the genius of my family of origin.  He retired early after a successful business career and has used his retirement years, now a decade long, in publishing four books, learning to paint, and visiting with and enjoying his children and grandchildren.  

All four of his books, two of them novels and two family histories, reflect upon times past.  In one he says he has discovered “time travel,” that ability we all have to look back and remember events of the past, bringing them to life again in writing, story- telling,  and even painting.

What I appreciate about my brother is that he visits the past, but does not get stuck there.  He continues to enjoy the present, spending time with family and enjoying the gifts of today.  If he worries about tomorrow he doesn’t tell me (although knowing our family genes I suspect he is prone to worry). If he regrets the past, it is not obvious in his writings which delight in the wit and laughter at growing up and growing older.

I thought of my brother as I was out of the balcony of First Baptist Raleigh on Sunday.  I did some time traveling back with a visit to two churches where I was pastor.  The first visit was a day trip to Roanoke where Betsy and I visited with the current pastor at Calvary Baptist Church and sat in her office which still looked so much the way it did when I was there.  Old memories came to mind and I was tempted to tell stories of the past, but disciplined myself to focus on the present and enjoy the conversation about what’s happening now with her and with the Church.

On Sunday morning Betsy and I worshiped at Greystone Church in Raleigh, seeing old and dear friends and remembering good times past.  At the same time, the sermon reminded us of today’s pressing issues and challenges.  I “time traveled” to the past as I studied each stone in the building and little architectural details, all of which had stories where I could get stuck.  My remembrances kept being interrupted by the fine sermon which called us to relevance in sharing hospitality and understanding its implications now.  Then, on Sunday evening we attended a youth concert where we saw members of  Oxford Baptist Church where I recently completed an interim.  It was good to remember our wonderful times together, but to realize, as I chatted with their new pastor, that times are changing.  He’s the same age as my son!

Tonight I’ll travel back to Raleigh First Baptist Church.   There I will stay all night, not in the balcony, but as host to families who are without homes.   FBC Raleigh hosts the Interfaith Hospitality Network one week a year.  They need persons to practice hospitality with these families who are in hard times.   I am glad I did not spend all my time just remembering the past yesterday at Greystone Church.  The pastor reminded me of the precious value of practicing radical hospitality.  Tonight I’ll get to do that from six in the evening until six in the morning, in the present reality of persons who are homeless and need to remember their stories and find reason to hope for better stories in the future. 

 

 

 

Words to Regret: "Honey, Let's Go See the Lone Ranger"

When my wife and I go a movie, it’s usually a true blockbuster.  After several months anticipation, we went to see “The Lone Ranger” last night.  I had read no reviews but felt this was going to be the movie of the year.  “Let’s get there early, honey, since I don’t want to fight the mob and sit on the front row, or even worse miss the seven o’clock showing.”

We arrived at the parking lot fifteen minutes early, still later than I had wished.  Amazingly, there were only three other cars in the theater lot.  I wondered if there had been a power outage from the thunderstorms in the area.  We paid for our tickets, senior discount duly given, and proceeded to our theater.  Preparing for the two hour and twenty minute film, I had stuffed the pockets of my cargo pants with granola bars, crackers, and some candies (who can afford concession prices on a retiree’s budget?).   I guess that’s why I felt my cargo pants slipping downward, requiring me to stop and ponder the situation.  Meanwhile, my wife talked the concessionaire into two, four ounce complementary waters while I carefully cinched in my belt to correct the cargo pant malfunction.

For ten minutes we sat alone in the theater awaiting the movie of the year.   Soon we were joined by three other couples, all who appeared our age or even old enough to remember The Lone Ranger’s 1932 radio debut.

I suppose you can tell that a movie is really long, or the viewers really old,  when fifty percent of the audience have to leave for a bathroom break during the viewing.  I’m not saying which of us had to make the trek to the bathroom, but my wife did fill me in on the part I missed:  “,…three train wrecks, a mine explosion, and a cannibalistic scene of some kind.”   But that’s o.k.  What I did not want to miss was the Lone Ranger on Silver shouting “Hi-YO Silver Away!” as the horse reared up.   It finally happened about four or five hours into the film (O.K. it just seemed like that).  Then came the only memorable line of the movie as Tonto exhorts his masked companion (Spoiler alert):  “Don’t ever say that again!”

Betsy and I laughed at ourselves.  O.K., actually my wife laughed at me.  But in the midst of a miserable movie, we had a pretty good time.  We remembered times past, we cringed at the horror scenes, we marveled at the animation, we chuckled at the sight of four baby boomer couples immersed in the nostalgia of the Lone Ranger altered by the age of computer technology, and we celebrated the fact that we didn’t have to sit on the front row to watch the film.

This morning I picked up the News and Observer to read a review entitled:  “Ranger Flop Likely to Make Disney More Cautious.” I wished I had read the review before going to the movie, but then I would have missed the great evening we spent together laughing and conversing while waiting to hear the Lone Ranger shout “Hi-YO Silver Away”!

 

 

You Are What You Eat--Pass the Donuts, Please!

After doing pretty well on my vegetarian, low fat, high fiber, healthy living diet, I fell off the wagon this morning.    I bought a dozen donuts—six glazed and six chocolate covered.  I kept thinking my previous night’s dinner of cracked wheat stuffed cabbage leaves and the lunch of tabouli salad and hummus would absolve me from the sin of a dozen fresh, warm donuts from the shop on the corner.  I am sure that donut shop was a factor in our finding a house in the “right” section of town!

Actually, I did not eat the entire box of donuts.  I took them with me to an early morning didactic I was leading for chaplain interns at the hospital where I work part-time . Had I known that such a small thing as sharing a dozen fresh donuts with a group of chaplains would give me such immediate esteem, I would have done so months ago.  There is something that a donut does that a cabbage roll never can.   Just try leading a session of exhausted chaplain interns, some of whom have been on call all week-end in crisis events, and offering them a tofu on whole wheat or sunflower seeds before you begin your  lecture.  Donuts are much more hospitable, if also loaded with all the toxic stuff that will clog your arteries and send you into a diabetic coma. 

I know I must have sinned by furnishing such terrible food to young chaplains and partaking of it with them.  May God and my wife forgive me.  I have confessed to God, but don’t have the courage to let my wife, the guru of good food, know of the donut indulgence.   But I hope my sin will be assuaged somewhat by the fact that one chaplain observed, after experiencing the miracle of a warm, morning donut, that the word “hospital” and “hospitality” have the same roots.   She had never noticed that what we do in the hospital and what we do in offering hospitality might be related.  

Yes, I know there are ways to be hospitable and eat healthy food at the same time.   But somehow, donuts at an eight a.m. didactic with fatigued interns just seemed to be the loving and hospitable thing to do.   I hope my wife buys that line when I tell her about the donuts.

 

Rainy Days and Monday...Grieving the Firefighters

Rainy days and Mondays don’t always get me down, contrary to the song’s true lyrics.   As I write this, it is more than raining, it is “monsooning.”   Raleigh is not usually like the rain forests of Ecuador this time of year. This day reminds me of Ecuador.  I remember staying at a grass roofed hostel in Santa Domingo de los Colorados, a city in the rain forest of Ecuador.   It rained there about every hour, in  downpours.  It was a relaxing rain, replenishing the lush forest and quenching the thirst  of the equatorial earth. It was welcomed and expected.

 Today I sit captive on my back porch, listening to the rhythm of the falling rains.  It is relaxing for a while, then disturbing as I realize there are flash flood warnings all around us.  People’s lives will be affected.  Farmers will have fields flooded and crops lost.  Lives may be lost as rivers and creeks flood their banks.

 I reflect on the fickleness of the weather this summer.  I remember the lyrics to another song, “listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, telling me just what a fool I’ve been.”  I can go that way with introspection and self-absorption if I want. But today I wonder about the foolishness of Mother Nature.  I refuse to attribute floods and droughts to God.  That’s not my theology. If it were, I’d be pretty angry with God today.  Yesterday, it was 117 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona.  Nineteen firefighters lost their lives in a raging wildfire there.   The copious rains today feel more like tears of the grieving , loud, persistent showers lamenting the cruelty of the world, but also proclaiming its awesomeness.  I can imagine the rains as God’s tears for all the grieving.

I wish God, or Mother Nature, or technology could have sent these summer monsoons westward yesterday to pour upon the fires of Arizona and save the lives of the nineteen valiant firefighters who perished there.  No words or reflections can soothe the grief of those families who have lost loved ones.  The rhythm of the falling rain reminds me that we live in a natural world of monsoons and wildfires, of sunshine and rain, all of which fall in all their fickleness upon us all. Sometimes, before I can respond or know how to respond, I just have to sit and listen to the falling rains and wonder a bit.